


A Dark Thing

by hunting-illogic (mysterymind277)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Sad, Unrequited, implied depression, really sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 09:38:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterymind277/pseuds/hunting-illogic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, he might have thought he had a chance with Jim. </p>
<p>He doesn't think it any more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dark Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: this is not a happy fic in any way.

It was as unlikely a love story as Leonard had ever heard; in fact, he didn't quite believe it to begin with. The first whispers darted around the cafeteria like excited, curious birds. They skittered through Engineering, down the halls, between the beds in Sick Bay, until even a stoic anti-gossip like Leonard knew every last rumour inside and out.

It wasn’t until he saw them together that he could grasp the reality of the situation.   

Jim and Spock.

Spock and Jim.

 Jim and Spock?

He’d muttered it to himself incredulously a few times over the first weeks, feeling the words on his tongue. They’d tessellated, but bitterly so.

Leonard wondered where that bitterness had come from, and then dismissed it, thinking himself selfish. Jim was happy like he hadn’t been in ages; his eyes glittered, his head was high, he sat at the con like it was his throne and the starship Enterprise his prosperous kingdom.

Leonard didn't like to think that it was Spock that had done it, mostly because it threw his own inadequacies into sharp relief. It wasn’t as if he had never made Jim smile, only that he had never made Jim content. He was always out searching for something; at Bones’ side, Jim had held himself like someone in a fight, a gladiator after the death blow, quivering with unspent potential. Now that Spock was his and he was undoubtedly Spock’s, he seemed relaxed and pleased with life. Leonard couldn’t help feeling replaced.  

Leonard’s own deep, empty unhappiness had been lingering around for so long he barely noticed it anymore; it was as much a part of him as his career, sitting heavy on his shoulders, deepening the lines between his dark eyes.

It murmured to him, about third-wheel dynamics, about an inability to please the people that mattered, about hopeless cases and too little too late. It made him want to claw out his insides.

So he immersed himself in his work and his patients, playing the attentive doctor to try and block out the white noise of Jim Kirk’s long awaited contentment.

* * *

 

“McCoy?”

Leonard looked up, the room blurring – he was supposed to be off-duty, but the idea of going and sitting in his bunk alone was unbearable. Christine Chapel stood over him, wearing a look of disapproval.

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Christine got straight to the point, dragging over a stool and sitting on it. Leonard rubbed his eyes.

“Go ahead. “

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Leonard blinked. He didn’t know what he was expecting, but that wasn’t it. “What are you talking about?”

The stool creaked as Christine leaned forward to place her elbows on the desk. Something hummed in the walls. The pressure in Leonard’s head increased slightly.

“You. When was the last time you slept?”

“Last night.”

“I mean, when was the last time you slept for more than two hours?” Christine looked half concerned, half exasperated, and Leonard couldn’t understand.

“Why does it matter?”

“Because I’ve been working with you for two years and I know what exhaustion looks like, Leonard.”

He looked up then, really looked; the familiarity of Christine’s face provided some comfort. She was hard-working, she had never let him down, she always knew what she was talking about. In another universe, they might have been together. Leonard wished briefly that this was such a universe – somewhere where the name McCoy was not synonymous with ‘failed, rotten relationships’ and ‘unrequited love’.

“I’m fine.” He said, looking at the desk. His hands had curled into defensive fists, and he could feel Christine noticing that.

“Sign off, now. Get some rest. Do whatever it is you do. Or I will have to file a psych report.”

Christine Chapel did not make empty threats, either.

“Dammit, Christine, what do you want me to say?!” A psych report was the last thing Leonard wanted. That would reach Jim, and lead to all sorts of questions that he was not ready to answer.

“Say that you’ll try.”

“Try to do what?”

“Try to help yourself. Working yourself into the ground isn’t helpful for any of us.”

The pressure in Leonard’s head throbbed, threatening to burst into a full-blown migraine. Maybe eight hours sleep would do him good.

“Fine.” Leonard said. He heard his voice pitch like a grouchy teenager’s, and felt a wave of gross shame. Christine wanted to ask him why, he could tell. But she wouldn’t; she seemed to know that asking would only release a torrent of pain.  

“Go on, then.” Christine touched his shoulder, briefly, in a way that was too Jim to be comforting.

He went.

* * *

 

In the corridor, he passed Jim; it was inevitable that he would. Somehow, today was turning into the day that he never wanted to live through.

“Hey, Bones. You okay?”

His throat was suddenly dry- the dark thing was constricting. “Yeah.” He managed. His hands clenched and unclenched.

Jim’s face went from quizzical to concerned. “You sure? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

What he meant was, “I haven’t spent time with you in a while.”

_Why don’t you like me, Bones?_

If the kid only knew.

“I’m fine.” Leonard said, the nickname Bones sounding static in the fog of sleep deprivation.

_Is that how he sees you? Old bones. Dead things in plastic bags._

_Something to be chewed on and discarded._

The dark thing tightened around his forearm, slipping its way up over his shoulder, trickling between his fingers like an oil slick.

“Bones?”

It wound around his spine.

Then Jim reached out to him, put a hand on him. It was familiar, in a nostalgic way.

“Enterprise to Bones, come in.”

“Sorry,” was all he could manage, before he heard steady footsteps behind him. Had they been in an empty stone cathedral, they couldn’t have echoed so loudly.

“Captain?” Spock’s even voice hailed them from behind.

Jim’s entire frame softened at the word, his blue eyes darkening from ice to pre-sunrise. Leonard felt the ripple of warmth move even into him, travelling through the palm that rested urgently on his sleeve. 

He imagined Spock’s hands encasing that one, gently encircling like an elegant birdcage; the dark thing moaned in his ear.

“Spock.” Jim’s mouth was the sweetest half-smile.

Shit. He made the name sound like something holy, untouchable. It sounded clipped coming from anyone else.

When Spock came to stand alongside Jim, the lighting of the corridor seemed to twist around them, until they were illuminated like some pedestal-bound statue. Photons shifted their paths for Spock and Jim, and it seemed _reasonable_.

Leonard felt sick to his core.

“Bones, you look awful.”Jim said, holding his arm tighter. Spock leaned in with him, like a satellite orbiting its mother planet.

_You do, Bones._

_Broken bones._

“Doctor, you are showing symptoms of extreme fatigue.” Spock said in his matter of fact way. Jim’s eyes flicked up to him, admiring him.

Leonard wanted to tell them to stop, to explain how the dark things were multiplying, but he couldn’t open his mouth. Instead, he just stood.

“Bones?”

“I’m going to bed.”

“Are you su-“

“I’m fine.” Leonard managed, his head pounding in sickening swung quavers. He was going to go back to his room and drink until he couldn’t feel anything.

Jim and Spock exchanged a glance, and Leonard was sure that a two-pronged fork in the gut would have hurt less.

Why did it have to be him, this boy in a man’s body? James T. Kirk, an optimist with ambitions that spanned the observable universe, and a heart with the gravity of a neutron star. 

As he walked the corridor to his room, the dark things muttered that Jim choosing Spock over him had been inevitable. 

_What did you expect? Those two are a singularity. You’re just a doctor, killing himself from the inside out with drink and despair._

In a roundabout way, it made him feel better, that even Spock’s ineffable Vulcan logic had been twisted around Jim’s little finger. Leonard wondered how it had happened. Had he looked into those bright eyes and fallen, sinking into a warm and bottomless pool the exact same shade of blue? Or had he been begged and cajoled and eventually given in, only to find that he couldn’t pull himself away, a magnet’s polarity eternally reversed?

Leonard didn't want to think about it. He wanted to lock himself in a bathroom and stick his fingers down his throat, something he hadn’t done since the divorce.

Some vile part of him liked the taste of acid. The dark things said it was better than lying there, fantasising about things that could never be.

Maybe Jim could see that, and that’s why he wasn’t the one being adored.

He so wanted to be adored.

Maybe he could have been, if he’d only got in there first – before the Enterprise, before the Academy, if he had decided to love Jim the day they first met on that hot, claustrophobic shuttle. He’d been strapped in, furious and terrified despite his best efforts, and the kid with the pretty face in the seat next door had been about as welcome as a crack in the hull.

Could he have gotten past that, and held onto Jim without reservation?

Leonard would never know.  

**Author's Note:**

> That was my first Trek fic; kind of a depressing way to start, but there you go! 
> 
> I really hope you enjoyed it, thanks for reading <3


End file.
